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BlackBerry made it popular with their BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service. Apple is launching iMessage with iOS 5. And now Samsung is joining the non-text-message-messaging-service party with ChatOn.

ChatOn, which is set to go live in September in over 120 countries, is Samsung's stab at creating a new world-wide messaging platform to compete with the aforementioned services, and work around cell carrier's asinine text-messaging fees. However, Samsung appears to be looking to reach a much larger audience than BBM and iMessage.

The ChatOn service will be compatible across multiple platforms including iOS, Android, Bada, BlackbBerry and a Web client users can download for their PCs. This appears to be the services main advantage over its competitors - and its huge. Being able to message friends across multiple platforms almost eliminates the need for text messaging. Not something the telecoms will be happy about.

This isn't the only feature Samsung is touting, though. ChatOn includes group messaging, video and voice messages, as well as contact, location and calendar sharing. Also, a number of social media interactions appear intertwined with the service including profile pages, comments on said pages, and an Interaction Rank feature that ranks your contacts based on how often you interact with them.

ChatOn is most importantly free, like iMessage and BBM. It appears the assault on traditional text-messaging will continue until carriers are forced to drop the service. That wont be for a while yet, but the end is nearing.

Drop texting service? Not everyone has a data plan or wants one. Seems a little bit of a stretch to say that at this point.

Pry

Well, whether it's voice, text, or the internet, everything your sending to and from your phone nowadays is data. Cell companies in actuality shouldn't even charge for texting as it uses no extra bandwith on their part. There is a reason texts are limited to 160 bytes ie 160 characters, thats the amount of open bandwidth on the "control channel" that your phone uses to talk to towers in the area.

Gizmodo had a great breakdown of how much you're getting raped by your cell carrier on the cost of a text. $20 for unlimited texting, when the literal maximum you can send in a month is somewhere around 5,000 texts. That would equate to roughly half a cent a text. but lets say you only send 1,000 a month, thats 2.5 cents a text. Compare this to how much a dollar of data could get you via a data plan:

AT&T charges $25 for 2 gigabytes of mobile data, which states how much they think their bits and bytes are worth. That comes out to 80 megabytes per dollar. 80 megabytes will get you 500,000 text messages—assuming you're writing the largest possible message, which you're often not (i.e. "Hey" "Nothing" "lol").

Now divide that dollar by the 500,000 potential texts. That comes out to $0.000002 per text—two ten thousandths of a cent. A very, very, very small amount of money. -Gizmodo

Don't we already have a cross-platform messaging app called Whatsapp? Whats so huge about ChatOn? I still feel Whatsapp will continue to remain most popular among all these messaging services coz it was here 1st and ppl r already comfortable using it. It works off contacts so u don't have to bother configuring it or adding users to it. It can also send video/audio/locations etc.

Yeah and AT&T's new texting plans aren't sitting well with me, either. My wife and I simply do not send/receive more than 200 texts a month, mainly because we use WhatsApp with each other (soon to be replaced with iMessage thankfully). Yes we'll be grandfathered in on the $5/mo 200 text plan, but what if we need to change our plans someday? Then we'll be forced to unlimited for $20 or pay 20 cents per, or FORTY DOLLARS for the same 200 texts we have now for $5! I mean seriously, unless you send/receive less than 100 a month (we normally go over 100 but not 200), then you're pretty much forced into the $20 unlimited plan. Ridiculous.

Originally Posted by yohu123

Don't we already have a cross-platform messaging app called Whatsapp? Whats so huge about ChatOn? I still feel Whatsapp will continue to remain most popular among all these messaging services coz it was here 1st and ppl r already comfortable using it. It works off contacts so u don't have to bother configuring it or adding users to it. It can also send video/audio/locations etc.

My wife and I use WhatsApp as of a few months ago, we used to use Ping! chat. The problem I have found with both apps, at least on our 3GS phones is that they are slow as hell to start up, and sometimes messages don't make it through or are extremely delayed. Service is down sometimes, etc. I love how easily and smoothly the built-in SMS app works, but my wife and I use WhatsApp with each other instead in order to stay within our 200/month $5 plans.

For me, iMessage is a welcome addition if it has the same stability and smoothness as the built-in current SMS app. I doubt I would use this ChatOn thing.

Whatsapp is great and I have been chatting with my family members we call Sibling's Banter but it requires a phone number to get it activated but I can see this Chaton should be even better as you can use it most Smartphones and also on PC platform for free. Will be looking forward

Yeah I too have been using Whatsapp since the beta and like it for the most part. I do find it irritating that you need to have a phone number (ie. no iPad support) though. I'm also often sitting at my computer in the office and wants to send a text to my girlfriend. I always wished Whatsapp had a web app that I could use for that. Yes I can pickup my phone but it would be easier and faster if I had an web app ready to go. ChatOn seems to be spot on on these two. I'll give it a try for sure.